Tag: politics

“Bombing for peace is like fucking for virginity” said once a Pakistani friend of mine, a woman who has lived in a country where peace is not something you find when you wake up, but something you need to search for deep in your heart and survival is far away from being a daily state of certainty. In countries like Pakistan life is a gift you appreciate with every breath you take. Life is a gift. Period. It does not matter which country you are from. It is a gift I appreciate every day of my life and I live in a peaceful country such as New Zealand, thanks God, where terrorism is almost considered unreal. Today I feel that the entire world is affected by a disease I call “heartlessness”. Everywhere people are dressed in uniforms of brutality (Bob Marley, Burnin’ and Lootin’). There is violence everywhere, because there is no peace in our hearts. There is no peace in our minds. There is no peace in our souls. Humanity is suffering. The earth is suffering – the trees, the birds, the ocean, the sky…Everything is crying. Everybody is dying. Are we blind? Are we depth? Are we senseless?

Did you ever stop to notice
All the blood we’ve shed before
Did you ever stop to notice
The crying Earth the weeping shores?
Did you ever stop to notice
All the children dead from war
Did you ever stop to notice
The crying Earth the weeping shores
I used to dream
I used to glance beyond the stars
Now I don’t know where we are
Although I know we’ve drifted far

Hey, what about yesterday? What about us?
What about the seas? What about us?
The heavens are falling down? What about us?
I can’t even breathe? What about us?
What about apathy? What about us?
I need you? What about us?
What about nature’s worth
It’s our planet’s womb? What about us?
What about animals? What about it?
We’ve turned kingdoms to dust? What about us?
What about elephants? What about us?
Have we lost their trust? What about us?
What about crying whales? What about us?
We’re ravaging the seas? What about us?
What about forest trails?
Burnt despite our pleas? What about us?
What about the holy land? What about it?
Torn apart by creed? What about us?
What about the common man? What about us?
Can’t we set him free? What about us?
What about children dying? What about us?
Can’t you hear them cry? What about us?
Where did we go wrong
Someone tell me why? What about us?
What about babies?? What about it?
What about the days? What about us?
What about all their joy? What about us?
What about the man? What about us?
What about the crying man? What about us?
What about Abraham? What about us?
What about death again
Do we give a damnMichael Jackson, Earth song

Bombing for peace is a farce!

Anyone who claims to bomb innocent civilians “for peace” is a terrorist, despite nationality, ethnicity and religion. This applies to Israelis who bomb innocent Palestinians, to Palestinians who are not bombing because they are Muslims, but because they are angry and desperate. A daughter who has seen her own mother losing her dignity and dying at checkpoints while giving birth will naturally blow herself up and consequently kill people. It is not a justifiable act, but it is understandable that you can simply lose your mind in that situation. And yes America, it applies to you as well. Don’t think that you get cleaned out of this dirty game you are a huge part of. You can’t combat terrorism while being a terrorist yourself. Or are your bombs which killed millions of people in Baghdad and Afghanistan “in the name of democracy and peace” justified? You claim you are defending your people. How can there be a defence without there being an attack? And we all know that 9/11 was a well planned “own goal” which on purpose spread dirt on Islam – a religion of peace, love and mercy. I am not defending Islam here. I am just telling some facts. Any religion is based on peace and love. No holy book speaks of killing people. So, to you too, dear people who claim to be Muslims. Being a Muslim is not just a name you can spit on. It is a way of life. You are just humans – imperfect while Islam is perfect. Carrying the name of Islam while hating is unislamic, “unspiritual” and inhuman. Islam means peace. To all those who bomb in the name of Allah – our creator – I’d like to say: I am sorry dude, but people who have a minimum of common sense and intelligence won’t swallow your pill. How can you be religious and at the same time bomb and kill people? And destroy creation? The name you carry is not honourd by you. You can’t be a Muslim and carry hate in your heart. I pray for all those families who lost their relatives in Boston last week. I pray for all those who are heavily injured and whose lives can never be the same like before. May you still find peace and love in challenging times and may you be rewarded for those feelings. I pray for those who kill in the name of peace. May you find the way to get to the deepest part of your soul and feel love for yourself first and then for your brothers and sisters on earth. Only then will there be peace on earth. I pray for all those families who lose their children in war or natural disasters every day. Those people whose pain is not mentioned in the media because “it is useless news while filling the newspaper with Boston news and blaming it on Islamic terrorists can change the people’s consciousness and can give us Americans the reason to continue the war against terrorism in Afghanistan”. Again I’d like to quote Bob Marley: “Until the philosophy that holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently abandoned and discredited there is war.”

Sometimes when I see how controlled we are by everything – by the food industry, by governments, schools, universities, etc – I just feel like writing down some lyrics.
I got lots to say.
NO pray.
NO grey.

No condition
No ambition
Only ignition!

I invite humanity to listen up to the message
with no reaction.
I invite humanity to “speak it up”
with no hesitation.
I invite humanity to clear it up and not fill it up
with shit.
It’s time to wake up and drop your illusionist.
Resist and insist!
I got lots to say…
I testify…

Humanity!
Listen up or you’ll not follow up
neither will you get up
Don’t be fed up or you’ll fuck it up!
I testify what you falsify!
And now glorify what I purify.
In a world full of trouble
you struggle and mumble.
I say…
Say a word and be a nerd
Feel it. Don’t deem it. But clean it.
You squeezin’ shit and even puttin’ on the lid
as if what you say got a way
you wanna keep it and feed it
you wanna leak it
but I am gonna beat it!

Stand up for what you say
or you’ll have to pay
your human blood!
Stand up from the mud!

You respond superficially
using sounds which you deem mounts
but they don’t count cuz they lack ground
and can’t be found.

Respondin’ from an irresolute world
contaminated and “disilluminated”.
Investigated but too hallucinated
to be rejuvenated
even when lubricated shit is slippin’ away
from the motor way.

Until you realize that
this is paradise
you won’t fantasize rejecting everyone’s trial
to harmonize.
Listen up. This is a message passin’ via no passage
Can you manage?
It’ll hit and not fit
cuz there ain’t no grid in the mid
eliminate the shit!
It’ll “shook” you and hook you.
But won’t book you.
Unless you manifest that it took you.

First you gotta listen up
and abandon all ya crap
accumulated and reamalgamated
from the time you spit in your own face
fuckin’ up with the entire grace
of the human race!

This is an innocent voice commin’ from the world
called choice
need to be more moist – or it’ ll crash
and the stars will flash your damn cash
and then, what will you smash?

You’re searchin’ resolution for no communal conclusion
in a material world, self-made growin’ fade
producin’ infection without satisfaction
cuz of ya misconception of fake-ass-action of
a system filled with mal – jurisdiction
transmogrified into fiction!

Brutal situation of manipulation can be stopped by
manifestation of gratification.
Ingratiation is part of your exploration
Make it an affirmation or you’ll follow a condemnation
of reclusive and abusive indignation.
Demonstrate your royalty and stop ya fatality
regain ya ability from post trauma distorted immobility
gettin’ a degree and payin’ an insane mental fee
is mortification of the human nation.
Cruel manifestation of bestial incarnation
created by spurious mal-information.

I say…
Look at the act of glorious inter-act
resurrect and intersect!
make it a fact!
You are the reference
and that’s a credence
and that’ll push you above the highest fence.
Until you touch the sky
and see any mystify.

There is a story by Osho which tells us how humanity has been indoctrinated by the system.

The story is called:

The Animal School

The animals got together in the forest one day and decided to start a school. There was a rabbit, a bird, a squirrel, a fish, and an eel, and they formed a board of directors.

The rabbit insisted that running be in the curriculum. The bird insisted that flying be in the curriculum. The fish insisted that swimming had to be in the curriculum, and the squirrel said that perpendicular tree climbing was absolutely necessary to the curriculum. They put all these things together and wrote a curriculum guide. Then they insisted that all of the animals take all of the subjects.

Although the rabbit was getting an A in running, perpendicular tree climbing was a real problem for him. He kept falling over backward. Pretty soon he got to be sort of brain-damaged and could not run anymore. He found that instead of making an A in running he was making a C, and of course he always made an F in perpendicular climbing.

The bird was really beautiful at flying, but when it comes to burrowing in the ground, he could not do well. He kept breaking his beak and wings. pretty soon he was making a C in flying as well as an F in burrowing, and he had a hell of a time with perpendicular climbing.

Finally, the animal who ended up being valedictorian of the class was a mentally retarded eel who did everything halfway. But the educators were really happy because everybody was taking all the subjects, and it was called a “broad-based education”.

(Osho 2001, 151)

A “broad-based education” is what I call homogenizing humanity and eradicating nature form its beautiful diversity.
I’d like to link to this beautiful story some beautiful words my yoga teacher says at the end of our practice when we meditate: “Breathe in. Concentrate on you breath. Every breath is different. Everyone is unique.” How beautifully said. I love those words in line with so many other words.
Everyone is unique and to be intelligent is to by yourself without any interference from the outside.
This requires concentration and focus.
Focus on your breath, as my yoga teacher says, not only during our yoga practice. The focus is to be permanent and constant without any deviation.
As Osho says intelligence dies in imitating others. The moment you imitate somebody else or start comparing yourself with someone else, you are losing your natural potential. You are stupid. People borrowed other people’s eyes. They are living a borrowed life, hence their life is paralysed (2001, 151).

We need to start from education which is nothing but a process of the total indoctrination of human kind. It is the process of colonization of the human mind and soul. It focuses on homogenization and therefore killing diversity. To be truly yourself you need to GET OUT of the system.

While I was “preparing” myself for my exam in development and underdevelopment, I came across an exam question that said: “Why are theories so important?”
I could not believe my eyes! I was shocked. The system shocked me again. Theories are nothing but well thought and defined “boxes” created by human beings in the past and which are no longer valid. Furthermore, theories are well – masticated thoughts, namely thoughts that have been analysed, reviewed, rethought and swallowed as I would express it. In academical terms let’s leave out the term “chew” and let’s use “written”. Theories are also the result of analysis of people who are simply not ME.
“If the above mentioned question comes up in my exam, I’m gonna fail” – that was my first reaction.
Why?
Because I do not think that theories are important. Then another question might come up:”So, why are you studying a paper that is about theories?”
I love reading. Period. I love reading anything, especially what is completely different from my perspective. That’s why I love conversing with priests and lecturers all of who are totally different from me. So, I love reading and knowing what “the box” says. What I mean by box is the system – any system with structures and which functions according to certain rules and criteria. I am a “free spirit”, a wild spirit – a human being.
It is interesting to read about theories and with “reading” I mean being detached from what we read. Detachment means not absorbing any information.
How can we graduate from a development diploma having only read or “studied” theories and nothing else?
How can we SEE our reality if we are looking at it with borrowed eyes, namely those of the past or the eyes of those who wrote a theory about modernization, a past period of time?
How can we apply a past theory to our reality?
Furthermore, while we are thinking about that theory we are missing out of lots of moments which determine our current reality.
So, what have we learnt? How can we solve global warming through the dependency theory for instance?
When the earth started to be affected by materialism – what man created such as cars, plastic, white ware and so many other things without which people cannot live nowadays anymore, dependency theory had not even realized that the earth was suffering, because dependency theorists were occupied with analysing countires’ underdevelopment which was apparently caused by a structured global world-system which made the periphery dependent on the centre. (While being stuck on thinking, analysing and comparing, dependency theorists missed out on the reality – which is the whole point.) In the meantime production kept rising and booming until creating a global headache to the earth. Now volcanoes are erupting, the ocean is angry and therefore reacting with powerful waves known as tsunamis, the whole in the ozone is widening and killing our beautiful plants, flowers and animals including us. We are not part of a higher category only because we possess intellect or “la raison” as French people would call it. We are all living creatures and part of this world. We are plants too. We are animals too. We are living creatures.

Drop the scenario and be wild.
To be wild is what defines our nature.
We are wild creatures. And we feel embarrassed when we have body odour, when we are not shaved, when we walk bare feet on the street, when we eat with our hand in a “public environment” because the system “taught” us to cover our smell with deodorant, possibly NIVEA – which is created and sold by the system by using modified natural products from the so called “Third World” countries. The system “taught” us to shave our beard, armpits, legs in order to be “more attractive”, to use cutlery to eat in order to be considered “sophisticated” and human by society. I could keep on listing a lot more “rules or conduct requirements” which indoctrinate humanity in the name of morals.
The focus on “Human rights” is another way to distort the human mind from reality and from focusing on being themselves in order to indoctrinate and homogenize people.
SEE the scenario:
How is it possible that we got to the point where we adopt and support policies which claim to be protecting “human rights” while clearly defining in the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” what the requirements are “to be human”?
Who made up all these rules about being human?
Where is the reference? We are told by the system such as the university system to “reference” and therefore proof the validity of our statements.
I’d like to ask the system one fundamental question: Where is the reference that proofs the meaning of being human?

The Declaration of Being Human

A structured mind is not a human mind.
A categorized mind is not a human mind.
A knowledgeable mind is not a human mind.
A defined mind is not a human mind.
A full mind is not a human mind.

A wild mind is a human mind.
An instinctive mind is a human mind.

Humanity is wild. Unpredictable and anarchic.
Realizing this fact is purifying the soul and healing cancer.

Be wild!
Be natural – namely the way nature created you
Be human!
(my reference: the human DNA)

The notion of development sounds ancient and historical. Sixty years have passed since the time Truman gave life to this concept which he successfully used to divide the world into poor and rich, legitimising the existence of the “Third World” and classifying it as a place inhabited by people who “lack” necessary resources and tools to overcome their status of “underdevelopment”. Development was considered the project which “eliminates poverty”. After the failure and disillusionment of various development theories a new era of critical development thinking – post-development – has commenced. In this essay I intend to examine the critique of development of those post-development authors who rejected development and those who claim to have found alternatives to development. In line with these authors I particularly aim to outline the reasons why development needs to be rejected and what needs to be refused in order for it to be functional in today’s world of constant struggle and dissatisfaction.

As Sachs (1992: 3 in Pieterse J.N. 2000, p. 175) claims “it is not the failure of development which has to be feared, but its success.” Sachs refers to the success of a particular development – the one utilised by the “developed” countries as a tool to homogenise humanity and eradicate its roots to facilitate the path to achieve total control over the world. What post-development writers reject is not development – the project of improving people’s lives but the “Post-World War II” (PWWII) development project, which consists of “ideas and practices premised upon the belief that some areas of the world are ‘developed’ and others are not and that those which are not can and should set about achieving the ‘development’ which has thus far eluded them” (Matthews S. 2004, p. 375). As a result, the success and failure of the PWWII development project lies in the eye of the beholder, namely it depends on where one is coming from. For the South all development has brought is nothing but destruction of resources, forests and culture. On the one hand, for instance, deforestation in Ghana has led to sharp increases of malnutrition and disease in the South (McMicahel 2008, 161-164). On the other hand, the increase of exports has benefited the North economically and supplied people with various food commodities. In northern countries economic growth and availability of diverse food is considered development. In the South, on the other hand, development is not necessarily the equivalent of economic growth. It rather entails a plurality of meanings depending on the context, that is the environment, history and peoples. In my opinion, the PWWII development project has not brought development in the entire world. Instead it has infected humanity. Various multinationals such as Nestles, Starbucks and Monsanto control our food supply and make sure farmers behave according to the rules of the system, that is they get sentenced if they try saving seeds in order to reuse them for the next season. The multinationals are obliging them to use genetically modified seeds instead in order to produce more and make more profit (Food Ink. Robert Kenner, Fortissimo Films, 2008. Film). This harms the environment and our health. Furthermore, millions of acres once used to feed poor countries are now used to grow kiwis, strawberries and asparagus for upper-middle-class consumers (McMichael 2008, 161-164). As a result, what the PWWII development project has brought about until now is nothing but destruction and underdevelopment both in the South and in the North. Most of the people living in “developed” countries are either unaware of what is going on or have no choice but buying what the supermarket offers because they cannot afford expensive food such as organic aliments. The frequent eruption of volcanoes, tsunamis and cyclones which according to the Shamans of the Amazon (2010, youtube) is the manifestation of the anger of nature which has not been looked after are other factors leading to total chaos in the world and which human beings are totally unaware of. I think that post-development writers such as Escobar or Esteva do not reject development. They reject the PWWII development project practised until now, known as development and are opened for alternatives to it.

To put into practice true development we need to dismantle what development discourse has created until now. It has “colonised reality and thus became reality” (Escobar 1992, p.419 in Pieterse 2000, p.180). Furthermore, all the prejudices and concepts about the Third World and poverty we have stalled in our minds until now need to be eradicated. In my opinion, this is only possible if we undergo a mental process of tabula rasa which will allow us to “open up the possibility to think reality differently” (Escobar 1992, 424 in Pieterse 2000, p. 180) and depict the world for what it is. “Human existence is nourished by true words with which men and women transform the world. To exist, humanly, is to name the world” (Freire 1996, p.69). Thus, “to speak a true word is to transform the world”(Freire 1996, p.68). I think, everything is relative and in the eye of the beholder. Therefore, if everything is relative, development is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. As a result, dichotomy gives rise to unauthentic words and consequently limits the process of transforming reality (Freire 1996, p.69). Therefore, development does not need to be planned since it is a natural and spontaneous process that manifests by itself. It ought to be accepted as it is and comes. As a result, there is no need for countries to worry about the development of other countries. Moreover, every country or peoples go through a development path which is diverse, distinct and valid only in the context it originated. I agree with Rahnema and Bawtree (1997, 385 in Matthews 2004, p.376) according to who “the people whose lives have been traumatised by development changes do not refuse to accept change. Rather, they want change that could leave them free to change the rules and the contents of change, according to their own culturally defined ethics and aspirations.” What has shaped our reality is discourse power representing other places (the power to name, to describe, to publish, to claim and construct knowledge) which translates the differences between the West and non-West into superiority of the former and justified political interventions that underpinned imperialism (McEwan 2009, p.65). The realisation of this fact is a crucial step forward which enables us to combat old mind constructs. I think that this realisation which is only achievable through a high spirit of awareness constitutes the alternative to development.

Reality takes a complete different shape if we annul all the discourses that have been created by development agents and theorists until now. In this way development is everywhere and underdevelopment is nowhere. An alternative to development, therefore, consists of making present the non-existent produced by the monocultures of knowledge, universal and global, linear time, classification and capitalist productivity, created by the Enlightenment thinking (Gibson – Graham 2005, p.5). In Jarga, for example, development exists. It is place-specific and determined by a mesh of traditional practices and relationships of gifting, borrowing, volunteering, sharing and reciprocated individual and collective work all of which are existent economic practices that have been rendered non-existent (Gibsom – Graham 2005, p. 15-16). An example of sharing is the tihap practice through which rice farmers receive money or fertilizers before or during the land preparation and repay the donor in rice, with interest added in, after the harvest season (Gibson-Graham 2005, p.15). I think it is necessary to change one’s thought pattern in order to see through and thus be able to speak a true word (Freire 1996, p.69) to finally change one’s attitude and behaviour. This transformation represents the essence of development which according to me has not been annulled by post-development theorists. I see a net affinity between those who reject development such as Escobar and those who are searching for alternatives to development such as Gibsom–Graham. Both are actually rejecting imperialistic and universalistic development that has shaped today’s society until now, the so called PWWII development project, and searching for alternatives to it. I think that an alternative to development is the acceptance of the diversity of the world which gives rise to different realities all of which deserve to exist in the way the people create them, that is with their culture, belief, personality, language, religion and way of expressing. I agree with Etounga-Manguelle according to who “a project premised upon a set of values cannot succeed in absence of those values” (Matthews 2007, p.380).

If we change our thought pattern we transmogrify our reality that is dualism into pluralism, homogeneity into heterogeneity, poverty into wealth. As a result, poverty can be a resource rather than a deficit (Max Neef 1982, 1991; Chambers, 1983 in Pieterse 2000, p.177). Changing our thought pattern means fighting the concept of orientalism, namely western representations of southern cultures (McEwan 2009, p.60). This makes reality more human and less inhuman. “Culturally perceived poverty need not be real material poverty: subsistence economies which serve basic needs through self-provisioning are not poor in the sense of being deprived” (Shiva V, 1998b, 10 in Pieterse 2000, p.177). If poverty is only a construct of the mind created by planners and development actomaniacs who “give the uniformed public the distorted impression of how the world’s impoverished are living their deprivations by presenting them as incapable of doing anything intelligent by themselves” (Rahnema 1992, 169 in Pieterse 2000, p.177) then the realisation of this fact automatically changes development and thus reality. We then eliminate the concept of poverty in our mind and start looking at people for who they believe they are, namely rich and wise rather than poor and ignorant. The annulment of development is the abandonment of previous mind construct. We shall therefore stop referring to it as development and accept reality for what is rather than for what should be or what it is not. Discourse power has created a farce condemning indigenous populations to near extinction, firstly making them think of themselves as inferior, underdeveloped and ignorant and secondly presenting them to the world as the ‘illiterate’, ‘malnourished’, ‘small farmers’, all of which are abnormalities created by development discourse aimed later to be treated and reformed (Escobar 1997, p.92). As a result, it seems to me as if development has been created intentionally in order to “underdevelop” people, namely taking away their dignity as human beings.

There is more evidence that outlines how complex the nature of development discourse has been. Anisur Rahman’s critique to post-development outlines how trapped people such as him are in the development discourse. He tries to save development by stating that “development is a very powerful means of expressing the conception of societal progress as the flowering of people’s creativity” and asking a fundamental question: “Must we abandon valuable words because they are abused? What to do then with words like democracy, cooperation, socialism, all of which are abused” (1993, 213-214 in Pieterse 2000, 183). These words might be valuable in theory, but in practice they are nonexistent. Democracy which is supposed to give the people an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives represents a farce, since in reality people’s lives are ruled by “private tyrannies” as Noam Chomsky calls them (Pilger 2002, 72), like the WTO (World Trade Organisation) for instance, an undemocratic multinational corporation, firstly because it is not elected by the citizens, secondly because it excludes other countries to participate in the decision making of trade (Black Gold. Marc Francis and Nick Francis, California Newsreel , 2006.Film) and third because it controls the global trade by establishing what supermarkets have to supply (Food Ink. Robert Kenner, Fortissimo Films, 2008. Film). Thus, “to glorify democracy and to silence the people is a farce; to discourse on humanism and to negate people is a lie” (Freire 1996, p.72). On the other hand, cooperation which implies togetherness and team work among countries is inexistent in reality. Instead people’s relationships are determined by separatism. If countries cooperated, then they would exchange resources equally and trade fairly. Instead “Iraqi children die because there is no chemotherapy and no pain control – the UN Sanction Committee had banned nitrous oxide as ‘weapon dual use’“(Pilger 2002, 50), while Africa has become more dependent than ever before. If Africa’s share of world trade increased by just 1 percentage point, it would generate a further 70 billion dollars a year or five times the amount Africa currently receives in aid (Black Gold. Marc Francis and Nick Francis, California Newsreel , 2006.Film). These examples prove Escobar’s statement to be right according to which the ‘discourse of development’ has been a ‘mechanism for the production and management of the Third World (1992b, 413-414 in Pieterse 2000, p.189) and “caricatures of the Islamic world presented in such a way as to make that world vulnerable to military aggression” (McEwan 2009, p.63). Moreover, they prove that development discourse has been sustained by utopian and quixotic concepts such as democracy, cooperation, freedom and independence all of which, in reality, are nothing else but the equivalent of imperialism. The use of these concepts have facilitated the elites to achieve what they intended, namely being the managers of the world. I agree with Escobar (p.91) according to who the most important exclusion, however, was and continues to be, what development is all about: people”.

In this essay, I have shown how post-development writers do not actually reject true development. They reject the PWWII development project. Thus, the rejection of development and the search for alternatives to it have the same objective and represent therefore the same concept. What the PWWII development project has contributed to is the eradication of people from their culture and the homogenisation of humanity which is anti-people and therefore anti-development. I conclude affirming that development exists. It cannot be seen if people remain unaware and incapable of thinking with their own minds. Awareness would not allow discourse power to colonise their minds. Development, therefore is visible only by those who accept the world for what is, namely with all its diversity and vibrations. Furthermore, “those who are able to recognise themselves as the oppressed are among the developers of this pedagogy” (Freire 1996, 35-36). An alternative to development is both the acceptance of the plurality and diversity shaping the world and the realisation that development occurs spontaneously and is determined by the people and the environment it originates. Once humanity accepts these two facts, there will be no reason of naming development anymore since development will just be.

Pushedforfreedom (2010, May 22), Shamans of the Amazon speak of our destructive
nature. This is a case of rebellion against technology and modernisation seen as the cause of destructive nature (Youtube clip). Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udcSlVic2jg

Today we live in a world of consumerism and materialism. Money determines if you eat and what you eat. The insatiable desire of countries with economic wealth and technological power for resources has infected other cultures with the same illness of consumerism dragging them to a state of poverty, need and dependency – a condition alimented by “free trade”, a strategic and well thought method. Behind the apparent initial aspiration towards an equitable development through “free trade” there is a reality where disequilibrium and infinite disadvantages for the periphery occur. The purpose of this essay is to discuss the failure of “free trade” and show how this method adopted by “the new rulers of the world[1]” (Pilger J.) leads to poverty and creates intentional underdevelopment in the South. Moreover, my aim is to discuss the reasons of the implausibility and inadaptability of “free trade” in development by displaying some of the invisible and disastrous realities hidden in today’s process of globalisation.

“Free trade” is a strategic tool used by “private tyrannies[2]” as Noam Chomsky calls them (Pilger 2002, 72) to keep the economy under control. It has been disadvantageous for countries such as Chile, for instance, known to be the “new democracy” in Washinton (Pilger 1999, 64). In Chile, in the 1980s all state enterprises were sold off to multinational corporations in the name of “free markets”. As a result, a country which prior to Pinochet had maintained a reasonable standard of living for most of its people was ravaged. Industry was dismantled and currency was devaluated (Pilger 1999, 64). This dragged 40% of Chilean people into poverty (McMichael 2008, 159). As a result, “free trade” is not conducted between nations, but “as transactions within 180 multinational corporations” (Pilger 1999, 72). Underdevelopment is a consequence of the partnership formed between “developed” nations and powerful elite classes in less developed countries. This, for instance benefited the minority class of Latin American elites only, rather than its entire population. The independence of an ex colony from a nation during the period of decolonisation was transmogrified into dependence of the country on powerful multinationals using “free trade” as a development tool to play the game of dictating global rules. Taiwan, Singapore and Korea were those who succeeded by not using the Washington Consensus policy and therefore proofed “free trade” to be not functional. Korean steel and shipbuilding industries, for instance, developed and became more competitive than those of Britain in the industrial sectors, not because of hyper-mobile productive capital that relocated from high-cost Britain to low-cost Korea, but because of a successful alliance between the Korean state and local capital in developing these industries (Kiely 2008, 183).

Furthermore, “free trade” preaches “market freedoms” but celebrates control over resources threatening the environment and resource regeneration. Global managers of today’s “market freedoms” extract resources from resourceful and therefore developed countries to satisfy their own interests of high mass consumption for the North. This “under-develops” resourceful countries such as Chile, Ghana and Brazil. Chile’s export boom overexploited the country’s natural resources beyond their ability to regenerate. In Ghana timber exports increased from 16 million dollars to 99 million dollars from 1983-1988 reducing its tropical forest to 25% of its original size. Deforestation has led to sharp increases in malnutrition and disease. The deprivation of food, fuel and medicine in Ghana and the replacement of rainforests with cattle ranches in Brazil which contract with European markets have led to poverty in the South (McMicahel 2008, 161-164). These facts contradict the Millennium Development Goals of human rights – the rights of each person on the planet to health, education, shelter, security. In today’s society millions of acres once used to feed poor countries are now used to grow kiwis, strawberries and asparagus for upper-middle-class consumers (McMichael 2008, 161). “Free trade”, therefore, is being adopted to satisfy the needs of the insatiable desire of the rich towards more materialism and consumerism rather than eliminating poverty. This means that it is profit rather than development oriented. According to the Shamans of the Amazon, for instance, the frequent eruption of volcanoes, tsunamis and cyclones are the manifestation of the anger of nature which has not been looked after (Shamans of the Amazon 2010, youtube). I think that underdevelopment is being created intentionally by putting the South into a comparative disadvantage. As a result, liberalisation is not about freeing trade, but about consolidating a corporate food regime (McMichael 2008, 171). It is worth mentioning the invalidity and implausibility of Ricardo’s economic theory of comparative advantage rooted in “free trade” policy. Firstly, because as Engels claimed, when countries are progressing the demand for manufactured goods are superior to primary goods such as food. As a result, trade via specialisation is a comparative advantage for countries producing manufactured goods and a comparative disadvantage for those producing primary goods such as the South. Secondly, because specialising in the production of a particular commodity means overproducing resources for exports and consequently threatening resource regeneration. I believe that self-sufficiency is the equivalent of development. Therefore, a self-sufficient country does not need to overproduce since it is already developed. Overproducing resources means working for the development of other countries at the expenses of one’s own underdevelopment.

Another reason of why “free trade” leads to underdevelopment and poverty is because of the strategic and atrocious game played by undemocratic private tyrannies such as the WTO, a multinational corporation that is not elected by the citizens and is therefore more powerful than the state. This shows the inapplicability of Friedrich Von Hayek’s argument according to which “liberalism makes it possible to utilise the knowledge and skills of all members of society to a much greater extent than would be possible in any order created by central direction” (Peet and Hartwick 2009, 81). There are some facts outlined by the Australian journalist John Pilger which I find necessary to refer to in order to comprehend why “free trade” is a misnomer and how the WTO which is the pumping vein of “free trade” contradicts the principles it is based on, namely non-discrimination, reciprocity, transparency and fairness. These facts, therefore, show the imperialistic nature of “free trade”. “Children in Iraq die because there is no chemotherapy and no pain control. The UN Sanctions Committee had banned nitrous oxide as ‘weapons dual use’. Yet this was used in caesarean sections to stop bleeding, and perhaps have a mother’s life.” (Pilger 2002, 50). As a result, it is clear that development via “free trade” remains a quixotic fantasy created by powerful corporations in order to satisfy their personal needs. If “free trade” is supposed to eliminate poverty through an equal exchange of resources, then the UN Sanctions Committee in New York should provide the medicine to Iraqis to survive. As a fact “free trade” certainly does not eliminate underdevelopment. On the contrary, it creates underdevelopment. Moreover, although the medicines are made from material extirpated from the South, the countries which are allowed to obtain them get charged a high price. Also, “if diseases are common in developing countries but are not a particular public health problem in the developed world, there is unlikely to be a profitable market for new drugs” (Matthews and Munoz Tellez 2008, 565). “Free trade”, therefore consists in no trade and no freedom.

Moreover, “free trade” in practice turns out to be a comparative disadvantage of the South due to exploitation of the workers and unequal income distribution. In Haiti, for example, workers work overtime to produce baseballs for the USA and get paid 38 cents for every dozen baseballs sewn. Three and a half to four baseballs can be sewn a day. (Pilger 1999, 65). This contradicts one of the principles of neoliberalism according to which workers get paid what they are worth. According to Marx, the value of a commodity is calculated by the labour time invested in a product (Peet and Hartwick 2009, 151). Today, however, brands are produced as opposed to products. What determines the value of a commodity today, such as sugar for example is not labour time but the name of the brand. This makes the value unquantifiable. We are living in a “private label decade” (Klein 2001, 6). Unequal trade and income distribution determine the essence of “free trade”. Exploitation of workers in developing countries producing manufactured goods for First World countries seem to be inevitable since a similar or even better product and mass-production technologies could sooner or later be manufactured by other countries reducing the price of the product. Since these mass-production technologies may involve large amounts of labour, it is convenient for firms to move production to developing countries with lower labour costs (Gwynne, Klak and Shaw 2003, 164-6 as cited in Gwynne 2008, 202). According to United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) figures, by the late 1990s, almost 50 per cent of manufacturing jobs were located in the developing world (Kiely 2008, 183). As a result, while people in the North are being bombarded by products of mass consumption with the sole purpose of “getting the economy flowing[3]”, people in the South are being exploited in the name of “development” and “free trade”. Therefore, development connotes unlimited economic growth for rich countries at the expenses of the less privileged via “free trade”. “Underdevelopment is generated by the same historical process which also generates economic development: the development of capitalism” (Frank 1966, 18 as cited in Peet and Hartwick 2009, 168).

To sum up, “free trade” seems to be a quixotic development tool which in theory draws a positive picture of its intentional development policy, but in reality practices unfair trade. Its literal meaning and discourses allude to a utopian development where all countries can achieve economic growth and comparative advantage by “liberalisation”, that is to “free” markets for an equitable exchange of resources. In reality, trade makes poor countries poorer and rich countries richer since “freeing” markets actually means being under International Financial Institution (IFI) supervision and controlled by powerful multinationals such as the WTO. “Free trade” is a misnomer. It entails hidden but evident imperialistic goals. This means that in reality, progress and change are also illusions since nothing has actually changed in real life since the period of colonialism and imperialism: In the past people used to conquer territories through colonisation. Today they conquer resources via “free trade”.

Poetic Lyric

References

Brohman, J. (1995). ‘Universalism, Eurocentrism, and Ideological Bias in Development Studies:From Modernisation to Neoliberalism’. Third World Quarterly 16(1), pp. 121-140.

Pushedforfreedom (2010, May 22), Shamans of the Amazon speak of our destructivenature. This is a case of rebellion against technology and modernisation seen as the cause of destructive nature (Youtube clip). Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udcSlVic2jg

Stiglitz, J. (2007). ‘Globalism’s Discontents’. In J.T. Roberts and A.B. Hite (eds.). The Globalisation and Development Reader: Perspectives on Development and Global Change. Blackwell, Oxford, pp.295-304.

[1] With this term Pilger J. refers to the multinationals.[2] With this terms Noam Chomsky refers to the multinationals.[3] Meaning the more people consume the more money circulates and finally the faster the economy grows. This, however, leads to global rather than national growth of the economy. I believe that development within a country can only be achieved if the focus is on the nation rather than the globe.